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The South Bank Show – NYPD Blue – Visions of Light – tape 1789

The first thing on this tape is the opening titles of Sorry from UK Gold. I wondered if the tape was mislabelled, but this recording was soon overwritten with LWT and The South Bank Show.

It’s a film about big women, and their invisibility in modern media, presented by Dawn French. Here she is with Alison Moyet.

There’s a long sequence where they’re photographing some large women to recreate old paintings, and the photographer is talking about why, perhaps, women used to be larger and now they’re not, and although he’s clearly trying to sound positive and inclusive, almost every word and every piece of body language seems to scream “why am I here having to look at these fatties?” He’s pretty awful, but I suppose he spends all of his time with skinny models, so he’s just not used to being with regular women.

Also interviewed in the programme, feminist writer Camille Paglia.

Every photoshoot that they arrange, the photographer chooses to do a parody of the old masters. It’s almost as if they can’t imagine a large woman in any other situation than a bygone era. And when you hear the editorial team from Esquire magazine talking about the pictures, it’s frankly revolting. “Can you imagine going to bed with her?” Long pause. They talk about large women as if they are somehow a whole different, exotic species.

At the end, Dawn lists a lot of larger famous women, and for some reason mentions Julie Burchill’s name quite a lot. I wonder if there was a bit of an issue there?

After this, there’s an episode of NYPD Blue.

Then, a documentary about cinematographers, part of Channel 4’s Visions of Light season, and it talks to some of the great cinematographers working at the time, like Ernest Dickerson, who worked a lot with Spike Lee

Michael Chapman, who shot Raging Bull among many others

Allen Daviau who shot ET.

Lisa Rinzler

Conrad Hall

William A Fraker

John Bailey

Caleb Deschanel

Nestor Almendros

Vilmos Zsigmond

Stephen H Burum

Sven Nykvist

Laszlo Kovacs

Haskell Wexler

John Alonzo

Owen Roizman

Vittorio Storaro

Gordon Willis

Bill Butler

Michael Ballhaus

Frederick Elmes

It’s an interesting documentary, filled with stories about the birth of cinema, and also more recent cinematographers talking about some of the iconic movies of the 70s and 80s.

After this, there’s the start of The Third Man, during which the tape ends.